Divine Comedy, Cary's Translation, Complete eBook

v. 131. Before the date.] “Before many
ages are past, before those fractions, which are drops
in the reckoning of every year, shall amount to so
large a portion of time, that January shall be no
more a winter month.” By this periphrasis
is meant " in a short time,” as we say familiarly,
such a thing will happen before a thousand years are
over when we mean, it will happen soon.

v. 135. Fortune shall be fain.] The commentators
in general suppose that our Poet here augurs that
great reform, which he vainly hoped would follow on
the arrival of the Emperor Henry vii. in Italy.
Lombardi refers the prognostication to Can Grande
della Scala: and, when we consider that this Canto
was not finished till after the death of Henry, as
appears from the mention that is made of John xxii,
it cannot be denied but the conjecture is probable.

CANTO XXVIII

v. 43. Such diff’rence.] The material
world and the intelligential (the copy and the pattern)
appear to Dante to differ in this respect, that the
orbits of the latter are more swift, the nearer they
are to the centre, whereas the contrary is the case
with the orbits of the former. The seeming contradiction
is thus accounted for by Beatrice. In the material
world, the more ample the body is, the greater is
the good of which itis capable supposing all the parts
to be equally perfect. But in the intelligential
world, the circles are more excellent and powerful,
the more they approximate to the central point, which
is God. Thus the first circle, that of the seraphim,
corresponds to the ninth sphere, or primum mobile,
the second, that of the cherubim, to the eighth sphere,
or heaven of fixed stars; the third, or circle of
thrones, to the seventh sphere, or planet of Saturn;
and in like manner throughout the two other trines
of circles and spheres.

v. 82. In number.] The sparkles exceeded the
number which would be produced by the sixty-four squares
of a chess-board, if for the first we reckoned one,
for the next, two; for the third, four; and so went
on doubling to the end of the account.

v. 106. Fearless of bruising from the nightly
ram.] Not injured, like the productions of our spring,
by the influence of autumn, when the constellation
Aries rises at sunset.